PARTICIPANT INC presents Tuesday Smillie, Reflecting Light into The Unshadow. The exhibition includes a selection of banners, textile collages, as well as recent prints and works on paper that posit imagination as radical practice. This series takes Ursula Le Guin’s 1969 breakout science fiction novel, The Left Hand of Darkness as a starting point, charting the subsequent evolution in Le Guin’s thinking. In a series of meticulously rendered watercolors, Smillie depicts the covers of the myriad editions of Le Guin’s book. One set of prints considers the author’s own annotated versions of the text. In another Smillie extrapolates on Le Guin’s strategies for potential use, tracing failure as inevitable and even necessary in reimagining social and societal structures. Alongside these, large-scale sewn and painted textile works such as Sometimes deploy the form of protest banners, emphasizing learning rather than teaching. As Johanna Fateman has noted of previous textile works in Artforum, “Tuesday Smillie’s ornate, meticulously sewn and painted trans-liberation banners could not get their radical point across more lovingly.”

Sunday, Jul 1, 7-9pm
Opening Reception
 
Sunday, Jul 29, 7-9pm
Night Viewing and Artist Talk with Tuesday Smillie